We departed from Westbrook, CT at 0645 hours just before sunrise and the winds were basically non-existent… the forecast was for 10-15 knots winds out of the NW increasing to 15-20 knots… seas 2-3 feet… figured it would not be too bad as the trip would in a westerly direction all day and we could stay closer to CT southern shoreline and more in the lee of the NW winds… sadly but not surprisingly the forecast was wrong… the winds started to pick up and by 0730 we had 15 knot winds out of the west… directly on our bow and the current was flooding… which had it moving in the opposite direction of the wind… this makes for some short and steep waves… very rough ride!

The ride was rough but at least we had the current with us giving us a slight boost… but this soon was lost as the winds picked up to a steady 25 knots by 0900 hours and what boost we were getting was taken away by the wave action… we soon were moving at between 4.5 and 5.5 knots… at times I saw the speed below 4 knots and we were pounding in the waves… decided to try and ease the ride and we began to tack back and forth across our desired path… this helped somewhat eliminating the hard pounding but the waves were still 4-6 feet with some large rouges every few minutes… the spray was flying over the top of the pilothouse… that makes it flying over 20 feet in the air… the pilothouse windows were being continually hit with the spray as if someone had a fire hose pointed at them… and we only had another 8-9 hours to go…. :)

As the afternoon hours came upon us we wer now getting gusts to over 30 knots… only good thing was that the current had switched from flood to ebb making the current and wind in the same direction… the waves remained at 4-6 but they were now not as steep and close together and the ride got a little better… and as we moved to the west we were also moving closer and closer to the west end of Long Island Sound and some bit of a break in the wind and waves… by about 1700 hours things had actually smoothed down to a very tolerable ride… but we now had a full ebb current against us so we were still only making 5 knots… :(

The thing that I will never get over wondering “why” is… we passed a lot of small recreational fishing boats… they were bouncing up and down like small corks… why do these people put themselves through this just to “fish”…

At approximately 1830 hours we were safely docked at the North Minneford Yacht Club on City Island, NY. We had traveled for 11 hours and 45 minutes covering 66.18 nautical miles averaging 5.63 knots.

Trip totals to date:

Distance: 135.74 nautical miles
Hours: 22 hours 41 minures
Avg Spd: 5.98 knots